


Six Weeks Ahead of Schedule

by firstdegreefangirl



Category: The Rookie (TV 2018)
Genre: Banter, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, Lucy is sick, Pre-Relationship, Sickfic, Snark, Tim insists on taking care of her, Tim only takes it little easy on Lucy when she's sick, accidental confessions, but they can't act on them, dammit daisy, mutual feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:59:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23998627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstdegreefangirl/pseuds/firstdegreefangirl
Summary: Lucy calls in sick, Tim shows up to take care of her and says something he didn't mean to.
Relationships: Tim Bradford/Lucy Chen
Comments: 22
Kudos: 190





	Six Weeks Ahead of Schedule

**Author's Note:**

> Happy seasonal allergies season! Mine don't get nearly as bad as Lucy's but they're never any fun regardless. Daisy wheedled this out of me in a conversation about Tim teasing Lucy for being soft, so this is her fault/credit.  
> Enjoy!  
> xoxo

Lucy feels out of sorts as soon as she wakes up from a night of fitful sleep. Her mouth is drier than usual, and the itchiness is running all the way down into her throat, which hurts when she swallows. She sits up and immediately notices the throbbing pressure in her head, pounding right behind her eyes like a jackhammer. Then she tries to breathe and finds her nose almost entirely blocked. 

_Allergy season_. 

She knows she can’t go to work today, not like this. There’s no way she could survive her shift if she wanted to curl up and die every time her head moved with the bouncing of the shop. So she calls into dispatch on autopilot, tells them that she’s taking one of the precious few sick days they offer to rookies, fires off a quick text to Jackson so he doesn’t think she’s been kidnapped again, and knocks back a double dose of Benadryl with her daily allergy meds, hoping she’ll at least be able to sleep through the worst of the day’s symptoms. 

When she wakes up, she’ll make some tea, sit in a hot bath and see if she can get the pressure down some. But first, there’s nothing she wants more than to give into her body’s desire to finish getting the rest it so badly needs. 

She wakes up later, though she has no idea how much later until she looks at the clock and sees that it’s only been four hours since her alarm went off. 

_So much for Benadryl making you drowsy_. 

But she’s still exhausted, so it takes her a minute to connect her sudden awakening with the _infernal_ pounding on the front door. It sounds like the door is going to come off of its hinges with another solid strike, so she drags herself out of bed, reaching for a hoodie to wrap around her shoulders, covering her flimsy tank top and most of the fuzzy pajama shorts she has on underneath. The sleeves are too much effort for her weary limbs, so she pulls it around her shoulders like a cape, and has just made it out of her bedroom when the knocking stops suddenly. 

The curiosity gets the better of her, if nothing else, so before she can let herself go back to bed, she finishes the seemingly endless trek through the kitchen and pulls the door open. 

Tim Bradford is standing on her doorstep, in full uniform, reaching for where she knows he keeps his set of lock picks on his duty belt. 

“Tim?” He looks up when she croaks his name, then picks up a paper sack she hadn’t even noticed sitting by his feet and pushes past her into the apartment. 

“Sarge said you were out sick; I’m riding solo today. Came by on my lunch to …" She sees him hesitate as he drops the bag unceremoniously on her countertop. “Make sure you weren’t just hungover.” It’s a weak excuse; that much shows on his face. But Lucy is tired, still on the brink of sleep, so she doesn’t put the effort into a rebuttal. “If you can’t chug a Gatorade and hit the streets after a long night, LAPD isn’t the career for you.” 

“No, I’m actually sick.” It’s the most words she’s said since she woke up for the first time today, and she’s surprised at how nasally and clogged her own voice sounds. M’s and B’s may as well be interchangeable for all she’s able to enunciate them, and she’s a good two scratchy octaves below where her tone usually sits. “It’s allergies, but I’m not in fighting shape. Hopefully I’ll be back tomorrow. Now, are you going to let me go back to sleep or …" 

She trails off, moving slowly toward her bedroom, but Tim grabs her wrist and stops her, pressing his hand to her forehead as he nudges her firmly toward the couch. 

“You’re sure it’s just allergies?” His brow furrows, but he lets go of her. “You got a thermometer around here?” 

Lucy points to the bathroom and mutters something about the “cabinet over the sink,” so he turns that direction and walks away, calling behind him as he goes. 

“There’s tissues in the sack. The prissy ones, with aloe and lotion. The air conditioning of tissues, I’m telling you. You’re spoiling yourself with this kind of crap, Boot.” Lucy can hear him rummaging in the bathroom, but smiles to herself at the thought of Tim Bradford buying aloe-infused tissues on duty just so he could tease her about being too soft. “Why do I have to do everything for you?” 

Before she can answer, he’s sticking the thermometer in her mouth. Which is probably for the best, because it means that Lucy doesn’t have to admit to not being able to come up with a reply around the exhaustion and medication hazing her brain. Tim circles back around to the kitchen and reappears with a bottle of water. The thermometer beeps and Lucy crosses her eyes to read the screen before he can take it from her. 

“See? No fever.” She coughs, gratefully accepting the water when he passes it. “It’s just --” 

“You know, Boot, you really can’t just expect people to show up and take care of you.” He cuts her off. 

“I don’t, I was fine. You ju--” 

“I can’t believe I’m going to be taking care of you for the rest of my life.” 

And _that’s_ one Lucy has never heard before. The rest of his life? Does he have a month to live? Is someone going to kill him? Lucy thinks it might be her, if he doesn't leave her alone so she can go back to sleep soon. 

“You … don’t have to.” It’s not half as snarky sounding as she’d hoped it would be, but at least she managed to get through an entire reply this time. 

“No, I’m going to. You’re my rookie.” He sounds so decisive when he says it that for a moment Lucy wonders if she’s ever going to get out of training. 

“I’m out of the academy in six weeks.” _Unless Tim has another trick up his sleeve, some test she’s going to fail that will set her back to square one_. 

“I know.” 

“So I won’t be your responsibility anymore.” She’s spelling it out slowly, but for whose sake she isn’t sure. 

“I never said that.” 

She’s even more confused now, staring incredulously at Tim sitting next to her on the couch, unpacking the grocery sack he’d managed to bring over from the kitchen without her noticing. It’s emptier now, she notices, and there’s no food among the pile of tissue boxes and cough drops and, yep, a single bottle of Gatorade. 

“Tim?” He freezes for a moment, then looks hesitantly at Lucy, like he’s crossed a line. 

“It’s not just for hangovers, Chen. Gatorade is always good to replenish your body’s electrolytes, and the light blue is the best flavor.” 

“Tim.” She says his name again and can tell that he knows he’s been caught. 

“Dammit,” he bites out the curse. “I wasn’t going to say anything.” 

“You--” Lucy dissolves into a coughing fit, which only subsides after Tim reaches over and thwacks her on the back a few times. “Thanks. You still haven’t. Not really.” 

He stands up and starts pacing the space between the coffee table and the television. Lucy immediately notices the loss of his body heat beside her, but figures it’s because the hoodie slid off of her shoulders and pulls it tighter across herself. 

“I wasn’t even going to say this much until you were riding on your own.” He rakes his fingers through his hair, tugging when they snag in a small tangle. “Shouldn’t have even said this much. We could both lose our jobs, reputations would be on the line …" 

“Tim.” She says his name again and tries to stand up. Another wave of dizziness stops her halfway through the motion, and she settles for turning slowly to let her gaze follow him to where he’s walking in tiny circles around her kitchen. 

“I had a whole plan.” Lucy can’t even tell if he’s still talking to her, or if he’s berating himself for whatever slip of the tongue he’s apparently made. “I wouldn’t be your TO anymore and …" 

“Tim?” Lucy clears her throat, but now she’s pretty sure she knows why Tim is here today, and it has nothing to do with a potential hangover. Granted, she could be entirely wrong, given how hazy everything feels right now, but something in her gut tells her that she’s spot on, even as she’s treading lightly just in case. “What was the plan?” 

“OK, fine.” He holds his hands up defensively, and even through the exhaustion, Lucy automatically starts trying to process through how she’d fight back if he tried something. 

_It’s one of Tim’s favorite “tests” on slow shifts: how do you take me down if my stance looks like this? She’s gotten much better at anticipating his moves, and even if he still wins half the time, she puts up a better fight each and every round._

“I had half of a plan. But I had another six weeks to figure out the rest.” He stops pacing, stands rooted to his spot in front of her dishwasher. “If I tell you, you can’t tell a _soul_ until you graduate. And these next six weeks don’t count toward anything except my final evaluation.” 

“OK?” Lucy draws each letter out for a few syllables, confusion evident in her voice and written plainly across her face. Tim turns and looks up, staring directly at her. 

“I was going to ask you out the day after you cleared field training. Nothing fancy, just a burger joint I like, little too far away to justify going on shift. Whether it was a date or just friends grabbing a bite was going to be up to you, but I was going to ask.” 

“Oh.” _So she was right, but hadn’t suspected a thing until five minutes ago._ She blinks twice before she says anything else. “OK.” 

“That’s it?” Tim gapes at her, leaning his weight on the edge of her counter. “Oh, OK?” 

“You didn’t ask anything.” Under any other circumstances, she’d sound smug, like she was playing him right back. Today, she just sounds a little confused, like she genuinely doesn’t understand what was unsatisfactory about her answer. “And apparently you’re not going to for six weeks. Oh, and Officer Bradford?” Something in his expression changes when she uses his formal title. “If I were you, I’d decide if you want it to be a date or not _before you ask me out_. No girl likes mixed signals.” 

* * *

Something twists in his stomach when he realizes that Lucy is flirting with him. Even now, when her voice sounds like sandpaper and she’s visibly on the edge of passing out, there’s something endearing about her, how she’s never been afraid to go toe-to-toe with him, even during her first few shifts, when any rookie should be terrified of their TO. Already, she’s made him a better man, and all he wants is to give her the chance to keep doing that day after day. 

Especially if she keeps teasing him like this, the verbal sparring reminding him not to ever let his guard down around her. 

There’s no way he’s going to last another six weeks. He was hardly going to keep it together before, but now? With this vague set of will-and-won't-do's hanging between them? He might not make it through the weekend. 

“I’m not going to wait six more weeks.” He takes a deep breath, steeling himself for whatever she might say. “Lucy, will you go for a burger with me? On a date?” 

“No.” He wasn’t prepared for a rejection; of every response he’d been mentally readying himself for, a flat-out ‘no’ wasn’t even a consideration. Especially after the way she’d reacted just now when he’d told her he was thinking about asking her out, but hadn’t actually done anything. 

Tim lets all of the air out of his lungs, and briefly considers not taking another breath in until he absolutely has to. All these months, he’d been so sure Lucy was flirting with him. He knows he’d been flirting with her, especially when the group of TOs and rookies was out together after shift. And he really thought he knew what her answer would be, even before she’d all but told him to ask. 

“I’m not leaving the house today. Not when I feel like I might topple over between here and my bed.” She smiles at him, and he feels himself reciprocate before his mind even registers what his muscles are doing. 

“I wouldn’t let that happen.” He means it, too. Other rookies he’s trained, it might have been funny. But the thought of Lucy coming into harm’s way and Tim not doing everything in his power to protect her? 

It’s an even worse feeling than when she’d turned him down moments ago. 

“I know. But,” She pauses, shifting to kneel against the back of the sofa so she can see him better. “If you brought a can of soup in your bag of tricks, I could be convinced to share it. Besides, you said the next six weeks don’t count after today, and if the burger is meant to be our first date, I don’t want to wait that long for the second.” 

_OK, well that makes a little more sense._ Leave it to Lucy to always be causing him trouble, even when she looks like death warmed over, and can’t possibly be feeling much better than that. 

Still, he feels like he needs to confirm her response, get a solid answer before he lets himself get his hopes up again. 

He hasn’t felt this confused by a woman since he was in high school and found his prom date kissing the team’s running back behind the keg at the afterparty. 

“Are you saying …" 

* * *

“Yes, Tim.” Lucy chuckles, amused by how quickly she’s able to rile Tim up, even when she’s off her A-game. “I’m saying yes.” 

He grins at that, this wide, automatic smile that fills his entire face with joy. The excitement seems to falter a little bit, though, when Lucy coughs twice and points at him. 

“One condition.” 

“Oh, we’re negotiating now?” He moves around the counter to meet Lucy over the couch, reaching for her extended finger to pull their hands together. 

_If this is as close as they get to a date for a month and a half,_ L ucy thinks as she squeezes his fingers, _we might as well make it count._

“You make me lunch before you go back to work. And stay to eat it with me.” 

“Tall ask, Boot. But I think something can be arranged.” 

* * *

Two heaping bowls of canned chicken noodle soup later, Tim is draping a blanket over Lucy, who’s passed out on the couch, and indulging himself with a small kiss to her forehead. She’s not quite asleep yet, and her eyes open as he pulls back and squeezes her shoulder lightly. 

“Let me know if you want me to drop by again after shift.” 

“I’d like that.” It’s sleepy and slurred, but she smiles up at him. 

“Alright, I’ll see you then.” He doesn't say ‘just for tonight’, even if he’s thinking it, because he knows he’d never actually deny her anything she could ask of him. 

Closing the door softly behind him, Tim heads back down the short flight of stairs to where he parked the shop against the curb in front of her building. 

_May as well reap at least one of the_ _benefits_ _of having to drive a half-robotic chunk of steel around all day and get a good parking spot. Especially if you’re half-convinced your partner-in-solving-crime is dying_. 

He turns the key and radios dispatch to put him back in service, then pulls out his phone and copies a website link into an empty text message. 

* * *

Lucy wakes up half an hour before Tim’s shift ends, but doesn’t move from the couch until he knocks on her door again. 

She does roll over and reach for her phone though, pulling it from the coffee table where Tim had carefully placed it in plain sight after helping her lay down and sliding it out of her hands. 

There’s two unread messages. One, she’d expected: a check-in from Jackson, asking if she needed anything before he goes out for dinner with Sterling. She quickly texts him back that she’s alright and to have a good time. 

The second message, though, she wouldn’t have expected in a thousand years. 

It’s from Tim, a single hamburger emoji and a link that takes her to an online menu for a 50s-style diner. 

_Six weeks to make up your mind on milkshake flavors, Boot._

**Author's Note:**

> *hamburger emoji*
> 
> xoxo


End file.
